Post-Sandy Oil Spill at Motiva Enterprises Oil Teminal, New Jersey
Crews are still working to clean up a major oil spill from the Motiva Enterprises Sewaren Terminal along the Arthur Kill River in New Jersey. An estimated 277,000 gallons of diesel fuel were spilled from storage tanks damaged by Hurricane Sandy at this facility co-owned by Shell. Some of this oil escaped into a tributary to the Arthur Kill River that separates New Jersey from Staten Island.
NOAA aerial survey photography taken after the spill gives us a very useful tool for analyzing storm damage, by comparing with pre-spill high-resolution imagery in Google Earth. We’ve shown some of the severe structural damage and beach erosion revealed by these photos. Now we’ll take a look at oil pollution: NOAA air photos shot on November 2 and November 3 show many oil slicks on the Arthur Kill, near marinas and industrial facilities. Some of the slicks are probably from the Motiva spill. We were able to identify two storage tanks on the aerial imagery that were moved off their foundations and partially crumpled. These may be the source of the spill.
As we’ve seen with previous severe storms like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ike, coastal oil-handling facilities are vulnerable to flooding and storm surge. With scientists forecasting more frequent severe storms fueled by warming ocean waters — and politicians in both parties pushing for expanded offshore drilling and the construction of coastal oil-handling infrastructure — we can expect to be hit more frequently with spills like this. Who should pay the inevitable costs associated with cleanup?
those before and after pictures you use are not of the Motiva terminal.
John – we're not sure exactly what the boundaries of the Sewaren Terminal are (see Google Maps http://goo.gl/maps/ybn35), so we haven't identified any of these images as such, except the first pair of before/after images showing two obviously dislodged storage tanks. These tanks are next to the location identified in Google as the Mottiva Enterprises LLC address, and fit the descriptions in the news accounts very well. If you have better location information for the facility, please let us know. As for the slicks on the Arthur Kill, there seem to be several sources for this pollution as we stated in the blog post.